Boeing and the NLRB

A watchdog bites

A federal agency bashes Boeing

THE factory squats on 610,000 square feet of land in North Charleston, South Carolina, and represents an investment of over $1 billion. It is scheduled to begin producing aeroplanes in July—Boeing's 787 Dreamliners, 835 of which have already been ordered for around $162 billion. It will employ thousands of workers: good news in a state where unemployment hovers around 10%. Unless, that is, the federal government shuts it down.

In March 2010, District Lodge 751 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), which represents workers at Boeing's Washington and Oregon plants, filed a complaint against Boeing with the National Labour Relations Board (NLRB), a federal agency that investigates allegations of unfair labour practices. The union charged that Boeing's decision to put a second production line of 787s in South Carolina (most of the planes will still be built at its Pacific Northwest plants) violated American labour laws. On April 20th of this year the NLRB's acting general counsel upheld the complaint.

What did Boeing do wrong? Its boss, Jim McNerney, referred to “the negative financial impacts” to Boeing of “strikes happening every three or four years in Puget Sound”. Jim Albaugh, an executive vice-president, told the Seattle Times that the overriding factor in deciding to expand in South Carolina rather than Washington “was not the business climate and it's not the wages we're paying people today. It was that we can't afford to have a work stoppage every three years.”

Such statements “were coercive to employees”, says the NLRB. “[Boeing's] actions were motivated by a desire to retaliate for past strikes and chill future strike activity.” The complaint seeks to prevent Boeing from building 787s beyond its Puget Sound, Washington plant.

Businesspeople everywhere in America are stunned. Employers have a constitutional right to whinge about unions (and vice versa). They are not allowed to punish strikers—by sacking them, for example. But Boeing has done nothing of the sort. No work has been transferred from Boeing's Puget Sound plant to South Carolina, nor have any IAM members lost their jobs. In 2007 Boeing announced that it would build seven 787s per month in Puget Sound; two years later, to handle the backlog of orders, it announced an expansion to South Carolina. The backlog is so large that Boeing is increasing its workforce at Puget Sound, not cutting it.

Boeing's general counsel, J. Michael Luttig, calls the complaint “preposterous” and “a breathtaking substitution of [the NLRB] for management in the running of an American company”. Republicans, including South Carolina's governor and two senators, are using the case as a club to bash the president (who has remained silent). Democrats and labour supporters insist that the complaint is unremarkable. Both sides will plead their cases before a judge in Seattle on June 14th—just weeks before a factory in South Carolina will (or won't) start making planes.